In the southwestern corner of the cemetery I found this interesting mausoleum:
Curious as to who is buried here, I took a photo of the brass plaques on the doors, in hopes of deciphering the inscription later.
Later, when I was examining the inscription, I noticed something odd. These are Thai letters, all right, but something is a little off.
First, there were too many spaces between the words. The Thais run their words together, using spaces as we would use a comma or period in English.
Next, some of the characters had a dot under them. There is no such symbol in ordinary Thai.
Third, some of the characters had a small circle over them. But in Thai the circle is always paired with a long-A symbol. Most of these circles were not.
I realized that what I was looking at wasn't Thai at all, but Sanskrit or Pali. So to decipher it, I would have to map the Thai letters to their Sanskrit/Pali sounds rather than their modern spoken sounds. In Thai script, all consonants are followed by an inherent vowel sound, and the dot cancels it. Thus, the first close-up word above is dha + m + ma + a, or dhammā. The little circle represents a postvocalic nasal (-m), so the second close-up word above is he + tu + m, or hetum.
And dhamma is a Pali word. It's in Pali!! After that, all I needed to do was map the letters. The result:
Ye dhamma hetuppabhava,
tesam hetum tathagatho aha;
tesam ca yo nirodho.
Evam vadi mahasamano.
Sabbe sankhara aniccati
yada pannaya passati
atha nibbindati dukkhe
esa maggo visuddhiya.
Sabbe sankhara dukkhati
yada pannaya passati
atha nibbindati dukkhe
esa maggo visuddhiya.
Sabbe dhamma anattati
yada pannaya passati
atha nibbindati dukkhe
esa maggo visuddhiya.
And Google was kind enough to point me to websites with the translation. The first stanza is a famous quote by (someone!), and the following three stanzas are verses from the Dhammapada:
Of things that proceed from a cause,
their cause the Tathagata has told;
and also their cessation.
Thus teaches the great ascetic.
All conditioned phenomena are impermanent;
when one sees this with wisdom,
one becomes weary of suffering.
This is the path to purity.
All conditioned phenomena are suffering;
when one sees this with wisdom,
one becomes weary of suffering.
This is the path to purity.
All dharmas are without self;
when one sees this with wisdom,
one becomes weary of suffering.
This is the path to purity.
Mystery solved. But it didn't answer my original question: who is buried here?
I later found from a Thai website that among those interred in this intriguing mausoleum is Bhumi Jensen, the king's Thai-American grandson who tragically died in the great tsunami of 2004 while vacationing in southern Thailand.
